We will not forget Epstein.
On Saturday, on the eve of Trump’s gaudy birthday celebration in DC (which will include UFC fighters promoting the kind of machismo and violence this president relishes), peaceful protesters in San Francisco had another kind of birthday message for our president and his allies.
At twelve noon on a foggy day in San Francisco, nearly 1,000 protesters flooded Ocean Beach to spell out the words “EPSTEIN.” Participants of all ages and backgrounds, many elderly, marched into careful formation, spelling out “EPSTEIN” inside a folder marked “TRUMP.” At the bottom a blue ribbon read “FILES TO TRIALS,” alongside an upside-down American flag—the now-famous maritime signal of distress, held aloft by men and women, hundreds of strangers, working together.
This creative “human banner” protest was well-timed—given this week’s release by The New York Times of an excerpt from the book Regime Change by Maggie Haverman and Jonathan Swan. This book brings to light the frantic efforts of JD Vance and White House staff to cover up Trump’s ties to the infamous pedophile Epstein and the infighting among them over what should—or should not be—revealed about Trump’s own involvement with the sexual abuse of young girls.
Brad Newsham, the human banner’s innovator, reminded me that, even in these devastating times, it is the audacity of ordinary people stepping up that can make a difference.
Newsham is a 74-year-old retired San Francisco taxi driver and published travel writer, who put his writing on hold in 2006 to join the movement to impeach George Bush for the falsehoods perpetrated in the name of the Iraq War. Frustrated with regular protests, Newsham said, he believed protests needed to use art and build more community—but he didn’t yet know how.
When Newsham’s daughter taught him about Google Earth, a lightbulb went off; he imagined the concept of the human banner. In 2007, after 11 months of planning, he birthed the first human banner protest. Thousands signed up on his Facebook event page and flooded the beach to spell out “IMPEACH” with their bodies. The press sent the images around the world–and just like that, his wild idea had an impact larger than he could have imagined.
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More banners have followed from Trump’s inauguration up until now. Some human banners have spelled out “NO KINGS,” and “FAMILIA,” and, following Renée Good and Alex Pretti’s deaths in Minneapolis, “IT WAS MURDER/ICE OUT.”
This Saturday, after the aerial drones were done capturing the images from the protest, hundreds of protesters walked to the edge of the sea. In between hugging friends and grateful participants and giving instructions to the cleanup crew, Newsham told me the reason he does what he does: “They’ve been lying to us forever. We want them to know it’s a bunch of rich people running this country, running us into the ground—and we want to put one more chink in the wall here.”
With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.
As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
The Nation elevates progressive ideas, movements, and elected officials achieving real change across the country into the national conversation. At the same time, our journalists are exposing how crypto and AI-funded super PACs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to knock out candidates they oppose, reporting on the devastating impact of the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, and sounding the alarm on attempts by red states to quickly redraw electoral maps, disenfranchising Southern Black voters.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Huevel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation